Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The line is peachy. In the film Fame, a young performer rails against Bach. He's boring he says.

His teacher counters with an apology that 300 hundred years on, will anyone even know who Victor (the student) is, let alone recall any of his music.

The enduring appeal of Bach is not that he is Bach (famous, is how he may be known) , but that his music is technically and creatively brilliant.

Standing on the shoulders of giant: the saying is well worn enough in the creative arts: poetry, dancing, acting, painting - and then it trails off.

In storytelling you might study Hitchcock, Luc Godard or Ozu; giants, and then there's journalism. You know where I'm going.

Do you know your Munroe from Murrow? Is Pulitzer the brand name for a prize? What of Nellie Bly, Veronica Guerin or any number of countless exceptionally talented journalists whose words create indelible worlds, whose voices cut the torpid air, whose resilience shone through their craft?

What of them?

For all sorts of reasons they may not figure. In the digital age often information of sorts and witticisms may lead you the blog, a host in fact and there's not a lot wrong with that.

Writing is indeed a living art, evolving in tempo and style, and modernity has yielded new exemplars, but then...!

Teach me
As a journalism educator, you might have come across this one: "You're my teacher, teach me". On the odd occasion it's because a student was not sure what words to use as a tag, or the button to press that will post the blog.

There's a bigger challenge I might counter afterwards, one that removes you from literally the "button push" of journalism and requires diving into that rich past world - the place where critical theory is formed.

Learn this and absorb that, but you negate the giants at your folly. In a digital world flooded with information and absorbing more by the second, the years ahead, experts cite, will be about selectivity and sharing - as if we weren't doing that already.

No, the years ahead, in part to stand out, in order to find a business model for journalism will steer to the sort of content/form and writing that made generations stay awake, made you cut out passages from a newspaper, made your revisit a thesaurus, search out more of the author's writings, spend an eternity on YouTube watching their technique.

Yes!

Interestingly we're entering what's the equivalent of the holo-deck for agenda theory. Where once journalism's professionals set the agenda for us, if you believe in these claims.

Now we're in a user-agenda theory - a quasi world unformed fully but an echo chamber of agenda theory, where arguably main stream still plays and we participate. Next year philosopher Jacque Ranciere's Politics of the aesthetics is about to expand into your living room -as Youtube, Apple and Google subsume the physical television.

Look forward, it's never been so prescient, but look back too, not for nostalgia, but to appreciate, learn from and endevaor to stand on the Bach's of journalism.

"In the 90s groups of videojournalists who considered themselves creatives working with photographers, broadcasters, journalists etc, conceived of an integrated approach to storytelling in news et al.

It would bridge multiple apps in varying forms, reconfiguring a visual praxis and plastic semiotic on and offline. This is one of those stories. The site-build, videos, interactivity and articles is the work of one author, a senior lecturer and International conference speaker".

Put another way, in the 90s groups of videojournalists begun to crack applications like Flash and Director, mixed with After Effects. The visual praxis is a reference to change in style and language over the years.

If you look at a 1960s film there are things they do, that today would be considered outdated. The average news interview cut was 30 seconds plus, 43 in cases. Today, 3-12 seconds and you're out. What's the point of the SOT (sound on tape) then other than a reinforcing of the authors inherent bias or point of view.

Similarly the visual praxis has altered from 16mm grainy to 35mm glossy to mimicry in HD. Academics would say HD mimesis :)

Plastic is a term used by the Arnheim and later Andre Bazin, one of the first film scholars, to describe film; referred to as the plastic arts.

So back in the 90s for want of a better name videojournalism assumed this all encompassing medium. It became plasticine, highly malleable, incredibly adept and frankly as limiting as ones imagination.

Videojournalism programming

Traditional programming which we can't jettison yet, mixed with idea forming for the net age, looks simplistically like this above. Each module represents a wider circuit of ideas.

Now here's the fun bit, which we're all having a nice little ding dong with at the moment.

If you cast your eyes across the book shelf of multimedia (Flash) film, art or music in your library you'll be lost in the sea of hardbacks, but when it comes to videojournalism - what do you see?

One of the best books for multimedia journalism using Flash is Flash journalism by Mindy McAdam's.

In the 90s in the absence of any notion multimedia had any relation with journalism we sought out books like Masters of Flash, featuring the likes of the the fabulous Hillman Curtis, Brendan Dawes, Joshua Davis - they became our mentors for most of Soho in the 90s. By default we looked for answers beyond classical journalism.

I remember it well when one senior BBC manager exclaimed: What's with this thing Flash? and he was a head of interactivity.

Advances in coding structure of Flash is such that today Hillman's site advises against purchasing his mega seller, but you only have to look at work like this to see how far ahead he was. My favourites are:

What made them exceptional wasn't just the creativity, but the functionality trying to push flash down 56k modems. That they did was genius and is still a function of google indexing today. The faster the site loads, the more appealing you are to Google's SEO robots.

In fact I can own up now, the coding structure - which I learnt helped me land the job as one of Lennox Lewis' promo, site and film makers. Lennox at the time was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world - about to take on Mike Tyson.

One of those sporting feats and occasions I'll never forget.

Filming Lennox Lewis training for his big world fight

There were magazine's galore as well e.g Computers Arts that showed the dark art and also inspired, today usurped by .Net magazine.

But the interesting thing is just as there are a million books on all the other creative fields, so there will be room for this nascent form, videojournalism to be scored in books a plenty.

Though I admit at this stage I agree with my publisher who sought a name change and different direction for the book I was/am writing. "The discipline is too limiting at the moment", she said. She's right.

It's not so much that you'll want to learn videojournalism, which can often be television masquerading in see through-clothes, but that you'll want to understand what the artist you're reading knows and how.

Where do they get their ideas from?

How are they inspired?

What are their epiphanies?

How do they deconstruct and construct their work?

What is their methodology?

For every artist, willing to submit themselves and publicly contest the artistry of their form may have something to say, that may interest you.

That's not to say you have to be over 25 to say something expressive [yes that can be patronising] since experience is independent of age, but we can't also discard the fact that if you reported the Vietnam War, you'd have experience to have reported the Gulf.

There's a reason why many journalism professors tend to be post 25, because aside from their knowledge, what you really want to tap into is their experience.

When ex-students talk to me about the job market in the UK, I remember my own private battle and the closed TV shop of the late 80s/ early 90s.

My sorry predicament would lead me to board a plane to meet a contact I had never met and defacto emigrate to South Africa to report from the danger zones of the townships.

David reporting for the BBC World Service from Kaylesha township

All of a sudden experiential learning begins to play a part.

They, multimediast, all have some back stories that compelled them to do things we might marvel at. There are obvious caveats to the form. In the latest work in Cairo, Salma- a newly minted videojournalism says she loved the independence, and flexibility.

To you it may be something beyond Salma's experience. How do I reconcile the mechanical camera with my own subjectivity? What is real and what isn't?

The award winning British journalist and documentary maker John Pilger opens up a debate that the camera, the device we place absolute trust in, can lie. It can lie because it's not recording the truth, or the journalist or videojournalist is being too selective, because they can or are unconsciously being hoodwinked.

By the way this criticism wasn't beyond being levelled at the father of documentary, Robert Flaherty in the 1930s.

So our interest in the form is predicated not on just on normative values, but the experience of using a camera and failing, and learning from that to succeed. We read stories about stories. The stories we try to conceive ourselves laden with passion, conflict, information, hold us together.

And to keep our interests we look to cultural theorists e.g. Brian McNair to guide us, to keep us ahead of the creative curve. Take the concept of John Caldwell's 'Second shift aesthetics', where a multimedia story supports its television version, or how we think and that method of how thinking is changing.

A colleague of mine is presently researching the next generation of collaborative thinking. She used to work as a researcher for NASA, so her research I venture will have huge interest.

New Visualisation

Meanwhile, 3D TV is taking off,differentiating itself from online. Now a 3DTV every 7 minutes is going to a home near you from one of the big high street chains .

That surely will affect the 360 panoramic of video making because say the experts depths must be enhanced for the effect, camera positions and rapid cuts will be kept to a minimum to allow the aesthetic impulse to take effect.

Then there's tablet visualisation. Take this interview I did in 2005 in Norway with Phillips's Frank Daems about their new e-reader - the birth of the tablet. How it's all changed. Or think about the apps market, or as they rounded up on You and Yours, the future of social space from the laptop to the living room.

So the future of the video form, still growing looks bright indeed, and just as there was a group of bespoke multimedia artists using video in the 90s, in the 00s we have videoists specialising in multimedia.

The fields wide open.

End

David continues to be excited by developments and in 2011 will be a juror for the Royal Television Society's Innovation in Journalism

NB: This page will be deprecated. Please see next post for reposted version.The transition in which the image gradually becomes clear on viewmagazine.tv is allegorical of video story telling I have been going through since formally from 1987.

"In the 90s groups of videojournalists who considered themselves creatives working with photographers, broadcasters, journalists etc, conceived of an integrated approach to storytelling in news et al.

It would bridge multiple apps in varying forms, reconfiguring a visual praxis and plastic semiotic on and offline. This is one of those stories. The site-build, videos, interactivity and articles is the work of one author, a senior lecturer and International conference speaker".

Put another way, in the 90s groups of videojournalists begun to crack applications like Flash and Director, mixed with After Effects. The visual praxis is a reference to change in style and language over the years.

If you look at a 1960s film there are things they do, that today would be considered outdated. The average news interview cut was 30 seconds plus, 43 in cases. Today, 3-12 seconds and you're out. What's the point of the SOT (sound on tape) then other than a reinforcing of the authors inherent bias or point of view.

Similarly the visual praxis has altered from 16mm grainy to 35mm glossy to mimicry in HD. Academics would say HD mimesis :)

Plastic is a term used by the Arnheim and later Andre Bazin, one of the first film scholars, to describe film; referred to as the plastic arts.

So back in the 90s for want of a better name videojournalism assumed this all encompassing medium. It became plasticine, highly malleable, incredibly adept and frankly as limiting as ones imagination.

Videojournalism programming

Traditional programming which we can't jettison yet, mixed with idea forming for the net age, looks simplistically like this above. Each module represents a wider circuit of ideas.

Now here's the fun bit, which we're all having a nice little ding dong with at the moment.

If you cast your eyes across the book shelf of multimedia (Flash) film, art or music in your library you'll be lost in the sea of hardbacks, but when it comes to videojournalism - what do you see?

One of the best books for multimedia journalism using Flash is Flash journalism by Mindy McAdam's.

In the 90s in the absence of any notion multimedia had any relation with journalism we sought out books like Masters of Flash, featuring the likes of the the fabulous Hillman Curtis, Brendan Dawes, Joshua Davis - they became our mentors for most of Soho in the 90s. By default we looked for answers beyond classical journalism.

I remember it well when one senior BBC manager exclaimed: What's with this thing Flash? and he was a head of interactivity.

Advances in coding structure of Flash is such that today Hillman's site advises against purchasing his mega seller, but you only have to look at work like this to see how far ahead he was. My favourites are:

What made them exceptional wasn't just the creativity, but the functionality trying to push flash down 56k modems. That they did was genius and is still a function of google indexing today. The faster the site loads, the more appealing you are to Google's SEO robots.

In fact I can own up now, the coding structure - which I learnt helped me land the job as one of Lennox Lewis' promo, site and film makers. Lennox at the time was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world - about to take on Mike Tyson.

One of those sporting feats and occasions I'll never forget.

Filming Lennox Lewis training for his big world fight

There were magazine's galore as well e.g Computers Arts that showed the dark art and also inspired, today usurped by .Net magazine.

But the interesting thing is just as there are a million books on all the other creative fields, so there will be room for this nascent form, videojournalism to be scored in books a plenty.

Though I admit at this stage I agree with my publisher who sought a name change and different direction for the book I was/am writing. "The discipline is too limiting at the moment", she said. She's right.

It's not so much that you'll want to learn videojournalism, which can often be television masquerading in see through-clothes, but that you'll want to understand what the artist you're reading knows and how.

Where do they get their ideas from?

How are they inspired?

What are their epiphanies?

How do they deconstruct and construct their work?

What is their methodology?

For every artist, willing to submit themselves and publicly contest the artistry of their form may have something to say, that may interest you.

That's not to say you have to be over 25 to say something expressive [yes that can be patronising] since experience is independent of age, but we can't also discard the fact that if you reported the Vietnam War, you'd have experience to have reported the Gulf.

There's a reason why many journalism professors tend to be post 25, because aside from their knowledge, what you really want to tap into is their experience.

When ex-students talk to me about the job market in the UK, I remember my own private battle and the closed TV shop of the late 80s/ early 90s.

My sorry predicament would lead me to board a plane to meet a contact I had never met and defacto emigrate to South Africa to report from the danger zones of the townships.

David reporting for the BBC World Service from Kaylesha township

All of a sudden experiential learning begins to play a part.

They, multimediast, all have some back stories that compelled them to do things we might marvel at. There are obvious caveats to the form. In the latest work in Cairo, Salma- a newly minted videojournalism says she loved the independence, and flexibility.

To you it may be something beyond Salma's experience. How do I reconcile the mechanical camera with my own subjectivity? What is real and what isn't?

The award winning British journalist and documentary maker John Pilger opens up a debate that the camera, the device we place absolute trust in, can lie. It can lie because it's not recording the truth, or the journalist or videojournalist is being too selective, because they can or are unconsciously being hoodwinked.

By the way this criticism wasn't beyond being levelled at the father of documentary, Robert Flaherty in the 1930s.

So our interest in the form is predicated not on just on normative values, but the experience of using a camera and failing, and learning from that to succeed. We read stories about stories. The stories we try to conceive ourselves laden with passion, conflict, information, hold us together.

And to keep our interests we look to cultural theorists e.g. Brian McNair to guide us, to keep us ahead of the creative curve. Take the concept of John Caldwell's 'Second shift aesthetics', where a multimedia story supports its television version, or how we think and that method of how thinking is changing.

A colleague of mine is presently researching the next generation of collaborative thinking. She used to work as a researcher for NASA, so her research I venture will have huge interest.

New Visualisation

Meanwhile, 3D TV is taking off,differentiating itself from online. Now a 3DTV every 7 minutes is going to a home near you from one of the big high street chains .

That surely will affect the 360 panoramic of video making because say the experts depths must be enhanced for the effect, camera positions and rapid cuts will be kept to a minimum to allow the aesthetic impulse to take effect.

Then there's tablet visualisation. Take this interview I did in 2005 in Norway with Phillips's Frank Daems about their new e-reader - the birth of the tablet. How it's all changed. Or think about the apps market, or as they rounded up on You and Yours, the future of social space from the laptop to the living room.

So the future of the video form, still growing looks bright indeed, and just as there was a group of bespoke multimedia artists using video in the 90s, in the 00s we have videoists specialising in multimedia.

The fields wide open.

End

David continues to be excited by developments and in 2011 will be a juror for the Royal Television Society's Innovation in Journalism

Blogging continued, now a fixture of the expressor and an inescapable evidential routine: social networks, the participatory content maker, the intimization of journalism, the trans-morgrification of journalism's hierarchy.

The instability of its future has steadied; the inevitability of its future secured - it does have one, just.

My year has been equally memorable. My research thesis continues to surprise me not only in furthering my understanding of the past, which I would argue is deeply important now for both context and building on creativity.

There was Newswire organised by the good people at Journalism.co.uk where I invited a ding-dong - face to face debate on visualisation and videojournalism.

Collisions- my artist in residency at the Southbank reinforced artistic practice and how critical thought; often Art's raison detre led to questions, more questions.

This in turn has solidified my lecturing experience. This time last year I had been invited to lecture at Rhodes University in South Africa. One of its lecturers I would meet sent me this lovely email recently

"Hi David I was very inspired by the way you taught us and have adapted my course to reflect your more experiential approach to learning. This year I also taught a course where my students worked with ordinary people from town filming on mobile phones. Will send you link as soon as it is up. A"

Then there was China - a deeply ingrained experience, both in videojournalism and how we learn. Art in Chinese art usually has multiple view points and perspectives I learnt.

In Bratislava I had a rare opportunity to speak to leading news makers from some of the world's independent media and more recently pushing further the concepts of the bastard child of film making videojournalism.

Yes, I meant that it ist starkest way. 16 years since I first practiced it; it's only been in the last few years that debate and new ideas amongst practitioners and creators has fermented deeper debate; some of cyclic. Yes we know the cameras are cheaper, but what else.

Next year January working with the BBC, we're looking forward to pushing it further and I'm confident the players involved will yield good new fruit.

Next year, based on new material and with some time to spare, I can get my own book out which captures my design video ( IMVJ) which I spoke about at SXSW and intend to do so at Apple stores in the new year.

Happy Christmas and holiday all. May the next year be more rewarding than the last

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Tron 3D legacy will blow you away; it represents a quantum leap in sleek graphics and draws on one of the coolest nonchalent actors around Jeff Bridges, reprising his 80s incarnation.

You could run out of superlatives, before you notice within the streams of white blinding light, there's a glowing digital elephant in the room and in Johnny Darkoesque fashion it won't go away.

Older abascus-dependent folk who witnessed Tron in their youth will have returned for the Nostalgia.

Younger folk into their Assassin's Creed will appreciate the concept of playing in a literally cool game. The inbetweeners who fancy an itellectual as well as emotional ride may want to pick their intellectual chip on the way out of the theatre.

If they forget to, the film that dare not speak its name will be screaming all the way through this plot, which consists so much of back stories, that intertitles at the start might have eroded the need for large tracts of narrative.

Matrix! There said it!

Tron's franchise owners will feel unnecessarily hard done. They were there before the Wachowski brothers; in fact it's conceivable the brothers may have been influenced by this 80s ground breaking sci-fantasy.

If Tron 3D legacy had a lot to live up to then by its own standards, it had the looming shadow of one of the most impressive sci-flicks ever to contend with and sadly it does a poor show of it.

This was a formalist film exploring abstract ideas but not quite pulling it off. But not to worry; if it's a visual spectacle you're after, you'll be subsumed into the grid and a world of anatomical hugging fashion garments and the plotline of Bridges fighting himself is an intriguing feat of CGI.

Monday, December 20, 2010

In the crackling of shortwave radio, or the intermittent luminance of a television screen, I could but only let my mind wander.

Who were those who informed us of the world at large?

In boarding school in Ghana, I'd catch glimpses of Ed Bradley 60 Minutes, or Alistair Cooke. They were indelible sonorous broadcasts.

Later, I arrived back in Britain, from a country recovering from a war of crisis and coup de tats to Britain going to war in the Falklands.

Like many teenagers I was unperturbed at what was happening somewhere in the deep Atlantic, but precociously mindful of occasionally catching the news story tellers.

"I Counted Them All Out and I Counted Them All Back" was a sight and sound I remember well.

One day, many years later a BBC Correspondent by the name of John Harrison would visit our house to complete a BBC report. Somehow that day I thought how I might swap a science degree for this ethereal thing of reportage.

In 1993, an event would bring me to ask advice of Mr Harrison. By then I was beginning to carve a career in journalism in South Africa. I never reminded him of our first encounter.

Through out my early days of reportage and even now, there were craftsmen and women I looked up to and marvelled at what they could do with words and the image.

Their manner was not so much to report, to inflect the voice into that forced undulating preposterous sound, but to speak to you.

I never knew Brian, but would often bump into him at Chatham House meetings, which at one point I might as well have asked for an extra set of keys I was in and out so often.

That aphorism is as deft and indelible as Michael Buerk's: "Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korum it lights up a biblical...."

Though yes completely different circumstances.

The phrase stayed with me long enough to yield an interesting back story.

The Hanrahan story

Rupert Nichols - Hanrahan's Navy minder in 1982

In 2005, now a senior lecturer in journalism having had a good bat at the crease of journalism, I recounted some of my favourite stories to a Rupert Nichols.

Rupert Nichols is a retired Navy press officer, an LT in rank who provided me a treat.

In 1982, he was tasked with minding a young reporter, a chap by the name of Hanrahan with whom he would quickly come to trust.

One morning a sensitive sortie of Harriers was planned. The reporting of the event was not so obvious, frustrating in fact because the press were not allowed to report from the flight deck.

Nichols shared a plan, he would count them all in having counted them out - off course he Nichols knew the full number and name of the pilots, but it wasn't information that could be reported.

Nichols handed over his information to Hanrahan and thence came that entombed saying: I Counted Them All Out and I Counted Them All Back".

When Nichols tells this story, his eyes light up like the quiet anonymous TV producer which a viewing TV audience rarely sees or hears about.

I mention this not as a spoiler of this great BBC reporter's legacy because he had the choice in the delivery, and lesser reporters would have fought the ocassion, ruined the sparseness it delicately encapsulated.

No, but I'm sure as many of us roll back tears, his family and close friends, one former LT Rupert Nichols will share in his own quiet thoughts when two young men met 28 years ago.

To a generation of reporters, which lest I forget included Charles Wheeler and Martin Bell, the art, true art of reportage is slowly drawing its curtains.

Bell mentioned on BBC News today, in words that only a craftsman could deliver of another: "Hanrahan knew how to write for silence".

No greater legacy could be offered to a new generation of storytellers than those who treated the television screen as a person and turned the dreams of a young lad listening to short wave into, what many of us consider something truly memorable.

My ode "Me and my camera" is buried somewhere in previous posts, but whilst your camera isn't everything, it can become something.

Often the wrong question is asked. What camera should I get?

I reply what do you want to do? You make your cloth according to the party you're going to.

Of course the D50s have done a Dyson on the camera industy's hoovers. You just can't be complacent.

But old timers, Uhum! and I straddle that grey zone will eulogise about the beasts and also the training that went into becominbg firstly an accomplishd camera wo/man and then director.

This Sky promo brings back some memories running around in the townships of South Africa. Yer gota know your filters from your white balance

No worries though, I converted to small cams in the mid 1990s. I have gone through a raft of the things - from the super VHS - yes I actually shot my BBC TV audition tape on that and yes I got the job, to the Hi-8, Beta, digibeta, VX1000, the A1, and now JVC.

My first Mac book with FCP 1.0 and Sony VX1000

Over on Mac video the Canon XF 100 and XF300, with a little help from the 60D is cooking up a wee fuss. I'll not be surprised if my good old friend Claudio Von Planta purchases one. Since owing the A1, he's shown an astute sense for choosing the right cameras for his gruelling jobs.

Claudio Von Planta pops by David's old pad to talk about the Sony A1

To broadcasters it's the fact a camcorder sized cam samples 422 and pushes video at 50mbit. For the techs it's all in the figures. If you're going online, the question remains, what do you want to do?

That said though, my hunch, the IPad is a stepping platform to personal cinema, so those codecs and high resolution will come in handy after all circa 2015, alongside the next mobile revolution of exclusive cloud-based media.

The monstrously superb digibeta, but at 50,000 UKP it was hard to justify when I turned to the web

So before I go DSR I'm sticking to my array of lenses for my JVC GY100 and its lens turret.

I like the feel, the balance, and centre of gravity is ergonomic plenty. You'll win no points for fast focus pulls - if you're not used to it, but apart from that avoid pointing the thing at nervous folk with side arms - you know what I mean.

IMVJ ( integrated multimedia videojournalism) explores design across the still image as well as the moving type.

The poster above is one of many submissions I'll be making towards my PhD study, which I will also release as a film in its own right.

The film is longitudinal in its scope covering a period over many years since first shooting, but it will mix fictional dramaturgy with fact, which through historicity I have figured how that can be done.

The impact of the cinematic image has become more pronounced with digital and 3d imagery and for broadcasters represents an arm of 360 degree programming. Concurrent with IMVJ the others include

Promo

Featurette - embedded insert

SN networking

Articles SEO enabled

Long form - magazine _ see Blue Print below

Blue Print articles on future digital programme makers. Piece held together with this striking design from Blue Print designer.

Johnny Selman advances his own trope with this enigmatic 356 project - turning a news event into a poster every day. It is genius!

Of course when it comes to poster design you'll be hard pressed not to include Saul Bass in your canon of top five and I particularly like D-A-J's critique.

The poster also became one of the first major multimedia packages in the late 90s by Magnetic North's Brendan Dawes - one of the original Masters of Flash.

IMVJ Design is an aspect of online and special projects I open up journalists and Masters students to recognise, and with increasingly mobile tablet devices it's a feature that moving and text makers will need to show an appreciation towards.

Here's a few more videojournalism poster designs on viewmagazine.tv

Multiple frames - homage to triptych.

Videojournalism Beirut - Indie newspapers takes to the form

Montage Chicago - 5.05 Videojournalism in Chicago

We Were VJS - IM6 Videojournalism at sea with War Games

8 Days - in 8 Days the first UK newspaper journalists from the regions broke videojournalism

Page two though revealed permissions I had been given to film within a 10 mile radius of the city.

The conversation ended. This is Videojournalism Egypt, and while as you'll find out later the state broadcaster has taken to the form, you can see the difficulties practicing if you're an independent.

Blogging
I am having to switch brains. I have been absent from these pages because of other commitments, yet in many ways this blog is a lifeline in exercising my thoughts.

If you're planning a PhD the key they say is to write. Write, write, write! Alas, whilst I enjoy posting, it's now competing with academic and artistic work.

However this post has me excited as in free-flow form I'm being reflexive of a series of events that serve the art of the much maligned Videojournalism.
This dovetails nicely into my lecturing and also research.

Aahh Videojournalism! I harbour a thought the late acclaimed film critic Bazin, were his alive, would have been goaded into a definition, much in the same way he put his mind to Whats is Cinema?

Dramatic space, montage, deep focus -this time with new practitioners discombobulating dramaturgy through present day realism?

Ok! Ok!

Equally so, the great film director of Egyptian origins Youssef Chahine, might have queried.

For videojournalism, a term straining underneath it's own masquerade, might have baffled both eminent artists, as it has done to many.

Someone I can call on as a friend, whom I met last year from watching his career on television on film show critiques provided a critical strand.

Changing videojournalism Film Maker Mark Cousins is the author of "one of the best books" on film The Story of Film ; not my words but that of actor Sean Connery.

Cousins called Videojournalism, "Impressionism" after the early 20th century art movement, rather than photographic paen. You can watch this on the link on viewmagazine.tv after the intro video.

Reconfiguring the plurality of videojournalism, which from hereon in this post I will refer to as IMVJ - a term that encapsulates a broader, less contentious term embracing netizenry and artistic-based film - is something I trust my new Egyptian friends will benefit from.

[if any of my Masters students just read the last para; yes it breaks Jakob's rules.. I know... I know]

Because for the last three years I have been involved in working with Egypt's public sector TV - Nile TV.

Whilst the hard graft has been undertaken by an NGO working in media, my role as facilitator, part game-changer, and trainer has been deeply fascinating.

Background

Satellite dish galores - the digi-landscape of Cairo

Firstly a background. I have been working directly in and training others in Videojournalism/ IMVJ for the last 16 years. Earlier on, it was a regurgitation to a large extent of television's language, with remnants of cinema.

By 2000, it had shifted. By mid 2000 I was asked to help drive the Press Association's Videojournalism programme. I did the very first one and followed up from journalist and ex-BBC camera Christine Fox.

There, I took video enthusiasts into the grey area of IMVJ; video/ film is design. It's liquid design in the frame, and design in its geography on the page - all of which affect the aesthetic.

IMVJ just as magazine design looks for space - a rarefied asesthetic loci. The photojournalist interprets this in the still image.

To understand IMVJ is to comprehend the visual static and running image in its many guises. In my research there are countless entities from videos panoramic vista e.g.

Image - and Montage

Standup - PTC, Walkies and Static

Q&A - seated, mid shots, doc form

Expressive video insert - Pictures that animate to video on the page

News of Record - What news was built on

News as aesthetic - What news aspires but traditionally eschews

Features - derived from Newsreels - post 60 mins

Docs - countless forms here from Griersonian to Reality (Wife Swap)

Cinema or clumsily out vinema

To understand IMVJ requires a transaction where you're ready to speak a new language, which is somehow a cacophony of street slangs and vernaculars from many antecedents.

In English you might say: "How are you?" In Afrikaans English: "Howzit!"

In Cairo - a new generation, already foregrounded in film/ video theory are learning that new language. At times it's been interesting - a replay of hoary chestnut conversations you've heard elsewhere.

Poster-boy pinnup IMVJ Mohammed was challenged by a battle-scared cameraman, with how dare he handle a camera or call himself a cameraman.

Descriptors are often unnecessary; but in this instance, its simple: "No I'm not a camera man I'm an VJ!!

Egypt is a country replete with stories and this skill set picked up and ran with by a new young generation should be a boon for those wanting to express themselves.

My Story
So on viewmagazine.tv the IMVJS first stories (inserts) include: a street vendor, a posh book store, the city's French influence in architecture and how one man's quest to be an actor in Egypt is frustrating him.

From Mohammed, a pioneer; in one month he shot 40 stories, he's brought back stories from the border-conflict regions,and long forms on literature and art.

This is exciting, and deeply moving for me watching the region embrace new technology and new ways of working - that extend beyond TV grammar logic.

More recently having worked in Beirut, and before then in Ghana and South Africa, the wheels of change can be highly problematized.

I'm hoping to build a dedicated site of their work, soon. But this post helps to shed a beam on some extraordinary work taking place behind the main glare of videojournalism, woops IMVJ and for me to, well, write really!

Friday, December 03, 2010

I'm watching Five by Abbas Kiarostami - whose films include Close-Up,(1990) and 10 on Ten,(2004) out of a canon of indelible films.

I laughed because this film makes a point no text can summon in meaning.

The film is essentially five long takes in homage to the magnificent film maker Yasujiro Ozu Tokyo Story, (1953)

To many it is a film without narrative. You may even tire quickly in search of his previous films, but something special is going on here within the visual vista.

Shot by anyone else lesser of Abbas' notoriety it might be difficult to sit through, but it is Abbas' film, just as Bill Viola portrays a rock in one of his films over a lengthy period.

It's Abbas film, so like any product of a great or exciting director, you attempt to deconstruct its purpose, excoriate meaning, even utter expletives. You could also just enjoy it.

But it misses the point, in the same way, Prince may take a scarf from an audience member, wipe his brow and return it which by now would have accrued immense value. I once caught Prince's jacket he threw at a concert, though it got wrestled away from me by a thug - who did let me try it on for size

Context
The film works, because you contextualise it against his other superb work. But it's not a film in the tradition of films. No it is something quite different. Simply it is art.

We're not there quite yet, in a truism within videojournalism, but there is a grey zone where the act of established and up coming videojournalists will feature as artistic pieces.

Manet as an impressionist, and technically a talented realist painter exemplifies this notion; that is to abandon form and experiment, you must first endeavor to understand, or at least appreciate form.

To redefine, reconfigure videojournalism practice, it's worth appreciating the myriad video forms and developing a critical analysis and then on occasion jumping of the cliff- metaphorically - to discover the unknown.

To do this though takes time of an unspecified duration. There is no limit; the limit is your dedication to finding it.

I'm done now, reaching over for a manuscript on semiotics, but something else has struck me. I have been playing Abbas on my 23' computer screen, and even at that size the cine-art works tremendously. Imagine that being on a huge screen in a public space.

Thursday, December 02, 2010

What! What do they know about football, most football conscious Brits, like James my mate are asking.

So the world cup caravan is set to hitch its wagon to the Kremlin.

BBC News delivered a series of reports on its 6 O'clock news, which aside from sticking a camera in the right place, hardly gave the reasons behind England's failure.

Handbag investigation, a sting by the Sunday Times and Last week's Panorama which accused three of the Fifa's members of allegedly taking bribes, were given the briefest of mentions.

But perhaps a sign of the white elephant in the room was visible when David Bond, BBC Sports Corespondent relayed live on air that Seth Blatter, Fifa's supremo told his team NOT to forget what the British press had done.

Or was he meant to say Seth told his Fifa colleagues TO forget what the British press had done.

Damn it! It's times like this when you want to exalt an alternative media to find the journalism: the stuff people don't want you to know, rather than the performance. Yes sticking a lens in Beckham's face is bound to produced the most obvious effect. Polish! So, give us more.

As one famous iconic advert said: where's the beef?

If the bloggers ever wanted to show its Trent Lott colours again, this is it.

Media management
Ah Democracy! Which curiously, perhaps only within the UK, though truth we're not that naive, do some think the activities of the media and government on a world stage are insoluble to who we are as Brits.

Radio 4's been pulling an assortment of programmes together over the last week; some MPs proclaiming how they wouldn't blame the media if England lost the bid. James Naughty, one of the presenters went so far to announce, I hope they don't get it, Russia!

Media and Government are different entities, but you couldn't and shouldn't rule out sour taste when it came to the crunch; a Fifa official picking up an apple with "English" stamped over it, before the vote.

Media is independent. Quite rightly so. The media did what it needed to do.

However to repeat that point, many of the FIFA members from nations where the media is not as independent as our own, would have baulked in the coffees about giving nation of the three Lions their vote.

Small wonder England were eliminated in the first round - only one vote from a non-English - despite being lauded earlier for their technical and superior commercial bid. Ouch!

England's second vote came from Issa Hayatou - amazing when one considers he was one of the Panorama three.

But BBC's sports correspondent's comments that the English bid were too late out of the blocks and did too little too secure votes is about to lead to protests from the English bid team.Woops! Again!

Russia, meanwhile will be knocking back the Schnaps, and the rather timid point that Russia doesn't have any stadia and world class transport is likely the biggest red herring.

Russia, the land of deal making and mega private wealth, where if anyone can raise a couple of billion and give two fingers to austerity and budget cutbacks, (what budget cuts?) its supporters think they can. Small point also their natural oil and gas.

Meanwhile, Fifa would have learnt some invaluable lessons from Africa, and its ability to shape an extravaganza according to its likes.

England had everything in place, but the philosophy of the times has changed. Users increasingly want more control of everything.

Fifa, presumably would rather it had more control on architecting new stadia and having its name attached to a legacy that puts Russia's infrastructure into the middle of the 21st century.

So England lost. The recriminations now will play into the hands of those believing the English could shed some of their hubris even in defeat.

On Thursday morning, awoken by suited men, posturing over the World Cup including David Beckham and a future King I turn to twitter.

As I seek to switch on my tweeter account, the radio announcer says the UK's PM is likely meeting Jack Warner now in an attempt to win over this influential figure within the World Cup movement.

Snag, errors and subterfuge!

I look outside the window; another cold Arctic night, wildlife and human life seeking shelter from the blizzards enveloping this smallish island. Not a bird shrill in the air.

When my Mac springs to life, one bird I note is very much alive makings its presence known and its beak has just taken a flesh-wounding peck out of my digital persona.

My Twitter account said "SUSPENDED". Surely (shirley), a mistake; the last thing I pitched to the big bird was why everyone should honour Vertov.

This is neither profane, nor inappropriate. Even the Russian critics have forgiven Vertov - a film maker long passed away.

I should have had a letter saying why; I hadn't. So I've asked kindly if my account can be restored. This is the email I have got back.

Hello david dunkley!
We understand that you're contesting an account suspension. Please be sure to read this entire email; you will need to take further action in order to reopen your ticket and trigger a review of your account.
Twitter suspends accounts for a variety of reasons:
• If your account was suspended for aggressive following behavior, you should have received an email notification to the address associated with your Twitter account. You'll need to confirm that you've removed all prohibited following automation from your account, and will stop any manual aggressive following behavior. To expedite your appeal process, please review our Best Practices page if you haven't already ................ ( I have edited for this post)
• While we strive to avoid mistakes, it's also possible that your account was suspended in error. If after reviewing the Rules, you have no idea why your account was suspended, just reply to this email indicating as much, and we'll take another look at your case. Our apologies if the error turns out to be ours.
Thanks,
Twitter Trust & Safety

Theocracy of the digital matrix
The theocracy of the digital matrix, I thought. Our lives have been so annexed to digital-must-dos, that like a scene from the Matrix, we really are in the hands of a giant machine.

How? Twitter, a private service I, like a kerbillion others have signed up to, has erroneously deleted, discarded, pecked-the-living-daylights out of me.

The consequences? I can't tweet. Any of my dear friends reading this may be inclined to think he's an undesirable, flee for your digital life.

How will I share the news of this wonderful association with the BBC, I'm working with them and others to bring to fruition that hopefully will redefine a small space of film making?

What about the doctor I'd just met where we spoke about existentialism and Manet, while she probed an orifice, I shall say no more about?

How will I listen in on my morning fix of comments from the great and good

This is a disaster?

What, I thought, would be the consequences other than a PR faux if uber tweet king @StephenFry was snapped ruthlessly as I have. "Stephen - your account has been suspended because you said something in prose".

Something untoward happened recently with twitters APIs requesting log-ins for no reason - reported by Wired . Are the two connected? Is anyone else been twilled by Twitter?

As I wait, to be reinstated. nothing. What Tweeter giveth, it can also taketh. Who knows who might be next in this lottery pecking?

The big bird regularly takes a big poo over transgressors of its service and rightly so, say I. Er except I have not threatened or done wrong to the blue bird or anyone else for that mattering hovering in space.

So, I wait.. Apparently I'm in a queue a digital tunnel with a verdict pending anytime soon or not, depending what the rules are for banishment.

So I ask you to please in the name of the Dodo, to scour my recent posts @viewmagazine and help me identify my wrong doings? Help a fellow person being henpecked for goodness sake.

It all rather reminds me of an interview I had with a fellow called Dirk Coetzee, whom once headed up South Africa's shadowy police force years ago.

"We were god on its own. We decided who was going to live and who was going to die", he told me matter-of-factly.

The comparison is absurd; lives were destroyed in his case, families ruined, but it didn't stop me thinking how wedded to a system we have become and how therefore we are at the mercy of that system - even when we're innocent.

At the time of writing this my account is still suspended. Can you help tell the big bird, I'd like my pecking order back.
-----------------------------------------------

Closing : 8 Hours later

Then I received this

Hello,
Your account was suspended because it posted updates that indicated that it was compromised or hacked.
I have un-suspended your account. When you log in, please be sure to reset your password. If your password no longer works, you can request a new one here:http://twitter.com/account/resend_password
It's also extremely important that you take the following actions:
a. Scan your computers for viruses and malware, especially if unauthorized Tweets continue to be posted in your accounts even after you've changed the password.
b. Use a password that you don't use anywhere else and never use the former password on a compromised account. Create a new and difficult password unique to Twitter that consists of both letters and numbers.
c. Check the Connections page at http://twitter.com/account/connections and revoke the access privileges of any third party applications that you do not recognize.
d. Avoid providing your username and/or email and password to untrusted third-party sites, especially sites promising "more followers fast."
e. Remove any updates that you did not post personally to your account.
You can also visit our help page for hacked or compromised accounts at:

Thanks!

Learning zone
So what did I learn, which I can pass on fron this episodes
1. Keep calm don't fire of angry ees. It's not personal
2. Use the email from your tweeter account to talk to tweeter, otherwise as I did in the furst hour emailing from an alternative account, twitter won't know who you are
3. Follow up after a period; I did after two hours, still being polite
4. blog about the experience so others might benefit from your experience - optional
5. email a friend to tweet for your liife back - also optional
6. Wait.
7. Thank tweeter - optional.

Channel 4's Jon Snow comments on David work as "original".

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Professor and Blogger Jeff Jarvis on David

Nice things said about David's work and training

David is a trend-setter who is always one step ahead of the game in terms of journalism, video and digital media. He is inspiring and an innovator and I am constantly in awe at what he achieves and ideas he comes up with. He’s also an excellent teacher and mentor. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with next!

David has touched a creative level that deserves an Oscar. More importantly he is paving the way for future journalists and will radically change the way we see news. A truly inspirational and dynamic character.

I presented viewmagazine.tv at a recent company meeting at NBC Universal for executives in digital media. This high-level media crowd was in stunned and amazed at the creativity and intellectual complexity of this dynamic website. A winner!

David has been changing the game since long before I met him. His work is always on the bleeding edge, his storytelling and design sense is always fantastic. This guy could make a story about paying your taxes look great and catch your interest!

David and I have never met, but he has been a cyber mentor to me for the past 18 months and has been a wealth of “thinking outside the box” information on the solo video journalist paradigm that has helped me form what I do and why.

With urgency, style, and provocation, David delivers credible and well-presented news stories. His work is as serious as it is entertaining. He pulls us into his “experiments” and leaves us to judge the approach for ourselves. It’s hard not to be influenced by his energy and enthusiasm.

A life-changing tutor and mentor - who ABSOLUTELY changed the world of video for my group of new VJs. His work is as inspiring as his teaching methods, and constantly challenging the best way to achieve results. His website and blog and compelling, must-follow sites for anyone working with video or multimedia on the web.

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